Backdrop On 4 May 2016, the Kannada daily Praja Vani carried a news report which claimed that Brahmins belonging to the Sanketi sect performed the Soma Yaga at the Mattur village near Shimoga, Karnataka. The village is known as the “Sanskrit village” in popular parlance. The Praja Vani news report quickly spread across the state and whipped up a frenzy of hostility against the Brahmin community as a whole with opinion pieces and editorials flying fast and thick. Equally, the report also generated massive outrage from the Brahmin community. However, upon closer investigation,Read More

A defining characteristic of our Secular-Left-Liberal academics is their incredible felicity to theorise reality. This theory is then injected into public discourse by their handmaidens in the media. As a consequence, we now have an entire generation of academics who sit in the lawns and lounges of India International Centre and spout out the “real” reason for say, the Muzaffarnagar riots and reel off reams of “analyses.” Equally, we have an entire generation of journalists whose faculties rebel against even the notion of stepping out their TV studios. And inRead More

Consider these headlines: Mob attacks Gujarat train, toll 57 (Times of India) godhra: in a ghastly incident, at least 57 persons were burnt alive and many injured when the ahmedabad-bound sabarmati express was stoned and set on fire by a mob at godhra junction on wednesday morning. the dead comprised 17 men, 25 women and 14 children, most of whom were in the s-6 coach which was charred as the mob put petrol cans to deadly use. at least 36 persons were taken to the godhra civil hospital with burnsRead More

My dictum that the Indian English media is a whore with none of the ethics of a whore has been proven correct again. And so the latest proof of its venal whoredom happens to be a barefaced lie, a shameless hoax, which in the pre-Internet era would’ve gone unnoticed. Perchance that it was noticed, its exposure would’ve been buried by everybody starting with the gatekeepers all the way up to the CEO of the brothel. And this piece would’ve never been written. That the media crossed all limits was provedRead More

Disclaimer: This piece is going to piss off a lot of people. I mean no offence but if you do take offence, I consider it a deed well done. One of the defining sentences in the various analyses of post-Independence Hindu revivalism, which is also original is this: Hindus have been playing the game by the rules set by their enemies. [Ed: Paraphrased] Elst wrote this in his masterful Decolonizing the Hindu Mind in 2001. More than a decade ago. As we see, very little has changed since then. IfRead More

And so it’s time to publish this blog’s only recurring feature. The list of the Most Loathsome Indians of 2012 is short this time simply because loathsomeness has become a way of life. Some usual names that figure pretty much every year have been omitted. If this surprises you, don’t be. Instead, think. Deeply. But before that, here’s the list. 9. Girish Karnad Charges: This Page 3-lusting, cocktail-party-regular, out-of-work, unwanted, and alleged playwright-turned-politician-turned-political playwright should’ve known that it’d have been better for him to remain silent and let others thinkRead More

There used to be a time not too long ago when the most charitable thing that the media said about Modi went something like this: “Narendra Modi is no stranger to controversy.” The story of how that narrative changed after the courts exonerated him in the riots cases and with how the Gujarat economic juggernaut kept rolling doesn’t need repetition. Today, no matter how hard the media tries, it simply cannot find a single thread to bash Modi, even the flimsiest, which it can expand, elongate and editorialize enough toRead More

Introduction Jagadish Shettar is all set to take oath as the 27th Chief Minister of Karnataka. The incumbent, Sadananda Gowda has already submitted his resignation to the BJP party president. That makes it three Chief Ministers in four years to rule Karnataka. That this is hardly a model of stability is clear on plain sight. However, “plain sight” is just that: it is superficial. Deeper analysis shows a completely different picture. This has much to do with the story of the BJP’s first-ever stab at power in South India andRead More

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Musings on Uttara Kaanda Part 1 Rama as a King The role of Rama as a king is only explored properly in the Uttara Kaanda. Ramayana ends with Rama being coronated as the king of Ayodhya. One of the more

This BBC report barely manages to conceal its glee over a recent farce ceremony where “hundreds of Hindu Dalits” converted to Buddhism or Christianity. Dissecting the BBC’s sleazy reportage is not the focus of this post.

I’m pretty sure this singular piece by Jawed Naqvi has given multiple orgasms to the worthies in our secular intelligentsia. He writes from Pakistan, and in the article, doesn’t merely parrot the same fantasy tales that our eminences call history.

Larissa, one of the more prolific commenters on my blog says this: One thing I disagree with Sandeep is that just because a scholar is “sympathetic” towards Hindus, does not mean that they are high calibre people. I am willing

Professor M.Hiriyanna is one of the little-known scholar-giants who gifted us new insights, and corrected thriving misperceptions in Indian philosophy. The title of this post is derived from his 1939 Indian Philosophical Congress lecture bearing the same title. His lecture

My circle of friends is as large and varied as the interests, hobbies and passions of each person in that circle. There’s no one, absolutely no one there who hasn’t heard of or read the classic Autobiography of a Yogi.

The Mohammadan conquest with its propagandist work and later the Christian missionary movement attempted to shake the stability of Hindu society and in an age deeply conscious of instability, authority naturally became the rock on which alone it seemed that

Ed: Bhartruhari seems to have spent a considerable portion of his life preparing a catalogue of fools. Here’s one more verse on that, perhaps the last. Varam Parvatadurgeshu Bhraantam Vanacaraih Saha| Na Moorkhajanasamparkah Surendrabhavaneshvapi|| How agreeable it is to wander

Read Field Notes 1 on Ellora for a backgrounder. The Ajanta Caves The well-known story of how John Smith, a British officer belonging to the Madras army regiment, (re)discovered Ajanta caves doesn’t bear repitition. However, it suffices to say that

Preface The opening line of the Wikipedia entry on Indology reads thus: Indology is a name given by indologists to the academic study of the history, languages, and cultures of South Asia. Which only reinforces the India-as-South-East-Asia stereotype, a veil